City Echoes

 I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young,
some suffer so much, I recall the  experience sweet and sad...
                                     --Walt Whitman, "The Wound Dresser"

On a brilliant spring morning,
Union Army soldiers and sailors march
across the old Pension Building
with caissons, horses, even long boats.
A general in full military regalia, astride his horse,
leads his command, raised and life-like,
around the frieze-- 
implacable, ever marching.

Where are the dead and wounded here?
At the Dupont Circle station across town,
Walt Whitman's words, incised
in stone, speak for them.

On a winter's night, a lone man
kneels by a legless soldier's cot,
one of many he will visit.
He moves among them 
washing and dressing wounds, writing letters,
speaking softly, his touch gentle.
He sits with the dead through the long night,
bearing witness.

I recall his words, filled with sorrow
for the young men who tasted life
so briefly.
The general orders his men to charge 
into a hell of fear, agony, and death, 
a scene that repeats untold times
like the perpetual marchers on the frieze.

Note: this poem was previously titled Echoes.  It received further revision in May and was recently submitted to the Baltimore Review.